Field Producer – Mentor (Oriya and Bengali speaking)

About us:
Video Volunteers (VV) is a media and human rights non-profit that is growing and changing the media and social change space in India. We are an international community media organisation that equips women and men in underdeveloped areas with video journalism skills, enabling entire communities to expose underreported stories from their communities and take action to right the wrongs of poverty, injustice and inequality. In our main program 212 community correspondents from marginalised communities produce video stories on human rights issues, to show to local officials of the area and to the rest of the world via the Internet.

Primary Responsibilities
Field producers will work with VV’s nationwide network of Community Correspondents (CCs) as they produce stories using mobile journalism and devise solutions to the problem they are reporting. The team of Field producers will help ensure that VV’s network of CCs is working at maximum efficiency by tracking and monitoring their performance.

Mentoring

• Responsible for the well being of the assigned Community Correspondents (CC), and for keeping them active in the VV network.
• Conduct 1-2 ‘mentoring’ calls per month, of 1-2 hours of duration, with each Correspondent.
• On these calls, mentor CCs through all aspects of producing good videos and creating local advocacy campaigns.
• Problem solve for Correspondents – act as their friend and support and partner, helping them find ways to make the VV work meaningful for them.
• Know their production history inside out – what they are working on, which are their best videos, and which are most likely to get impact.
• Keep VV’s database up to date with relevant information about each CC.
• Manage a whatsapp group of Correspondents in a particular state, using this platform to build community amongst the Correspondents.
• Maintain the state Facebook page of the Correspondents assigned to you, helping to increase its reach and increase CC engagement with the page.
• Ensure all Correspondent complaints and problems are solved in a timely manner, such as those related to payment or other technicalities.
• Create case notes and change stories as and when required- carry out good documentation, as the primary person in contact with the CC.

Producing stories

• Responsible for bringing in a certain number of stories from each Correspondent.
• Help CC’s ideate new video ideas, and then when they come in, review the videos against VV’s verification and quality standards. If the video is acceptable, upload the video to VV’s database and to the state facebook pages, where the video is shared.
• Upload select Correspondent videos to YouTube
• Handle technical Troubleshooting of all videos – know technically how to shoot and edit simple videos using the devices and software VV uses.
• Identify stories that have the potential to succeed in the mainstream media. Help CC’s to produce ever-better stories so that more of their stories reach the mainstream
• Create simple scripts for these videos and advise VV’s editors on the edits, as and when required.
• Develop knowledge of the issues your Correspondents work on and the states they come from, by keeping yourself informed and regularly reading the paper
• Work with CC’s to develop special videos on important or unusual thematics; produce these special videos with the Correspondents.
• Participate in editorial planning meetings, by bringing story ideas from your state and by knowing the production status of all important videos made by your Correspondents

Training
• Conduct trainings of Community Correspondents and others as and when required.
• Manage production data and flow – maintain all documentation related to production of stories, tracking impact and other data pertaining to the network of community correspondents.
• Organize the logistics for trainings or other events as and when required, such as booking tickets, hotels, etc.

Advocacy and Impacts
• Create an impact plan for each story in conjunction with the Correspondent. An impact plan is a set of steps a CC undertakes in order to solve the problem the video is about.
• Assist the CC in achieving the impact through regular phone calls and follow ups.
• Document ‘impact achieved’ conversations in the database.
• Responsible for the Impact video production, including mentoring, reviewing and feedback. Review all Impact videos using the impact checklist, give feedback to CCs and update the corresponding database entries.
• Generate discussion on the state groups about state advocacy efforts and joint campaigns that Correspondents can undertake together

Qualifications
• Motivated by a deep belief in human rights and desire to work towards the empowerment of other individuals
• 0 to 4 years of experience in journalism or news production.
• Oriya and Bengali speakers preferred.
• Passion for current events and an avid consumer of the news
• Team player
• Experience working with communities and interest in training and teaching
• Strong experience with technology, social media and video editing.
• Mature, respectful and calm demeanor
• Excellent writing skills
• Process orientation
• Understanding of issue related to Human Rights
• Ability to multitask and keep track of various deliverables and projects
• Knowledge of Excel, PPT and office applications.
• Strong phone and verbal communication skills along with active listening

In accordance with our staff diversity standards, preference will be given to women candidates. Candidates from marginalized backgrounds such as Dalit (Scheduled Castes) and Adivasi (Sheduled Tribes) are especially encouraged to apply.

This position is to be based either in Goa, Jharkhand or West Bengal and involves occasional travel